There are plenty of words in Swedish that can look very similar – often identical, on a quick scan – to a non-native speaker. But to Swedes, those same words are quite distinct from one another.
The culprit here is often vowels, of which Swedish has nine – and double that in practice, because in Swedish, 'long' and 'short' versions of the same vowel often make the difference between on word and another. One of the first surprises some learners of Swedish encounter is that all those diacritics on top of 'A's and 'O's are not accents but instead mark whole other letters: there are three more letters in the Swedish alphabet than the English one, and all of them are vowels (Ä, Å, Ö).
This is where English-speakers can run into trouble with everyday words like väg, which means "road." In its definite form, vägen ("the road," or "the way") you'll find väg cropping up quite a lot in street names: Björkvägen, for example, means "The birch way".
A completely different common word is vägg, which means "wall". Unhelpfully for those who have a hard time spotting the fine distinctions in Swedish words, the word for "road" (that's väg, with one 'g'), is an en noun (so, "a road" is en väg) and has an -ar ending in the plural (vägar = "roads"), and the same is true for the word for "wall" (en vägg = "a wall," väggar = "walls").
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Further complicating matters is the common verb att väga, which means "to weigh." You can also find this one in standard phrasal verbs like vägar upp (or uppväger), which means "outweigh," as in 'the advantages outweigh the disadvantages.'
To Swedes, as well as those more used to Swedish, the word en våg ("a wave," as in what happens in the ocean) is completely different from en väg ("a road") and en vägg ("a wall") – having, as it does, a different letter (å) in the middle. But to beginners, it can just look like an "a" with a slightly different squiggle on top.
The saving grace here is that context can help. It's pretty clear, for example, that the compound word vägtrafiken, means "the road traffic," not "the wall traffic" or "the wave traffic" (or "the weigh[ing] traffic"). Somewhat trickier, but useful to know is i väg (often also written as one word, iväg), which is a common expression meaning "away" (e.g. springa iväg = "run away").
Example sentences:
När asfalten värms upp kraftigt kan väggreppet försämras snabbt.
When the asphalt heats up intensely, road grip can deteriorate quickly.
Vägarna ser daliga ut i den har snöstormen.
The roads are looking bad in this snow storm.
Vilken väg tar vi till stan?
What route do we take to get downtown?
Villa, Volvo, Vovve: The Local’s Word Guide to Swedish Life, written by The Local’s journalists, is available to order. Head to lysforlag.com/vvv to read more about it. It is also possible to buy your copy from Amazon US, Amazon UK, Bokus or Adlibris.